Pietro Cavallini

Pietro Cavallini (c. 1240 or 1250 – c. 1330) was an Italian painter in the Italo-Gothic style who also designed mosaics, active in the late Middle Ages. Little is known about his life, but he signed himself pictor romanus, which indicates that he was from Rome. He matters chiefly because he developed what is known as Roman naturalism, a style that influenced artists in Florence and Siena.

His first notable works were the mosaic cycles for the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura, with scenes from the Old and New Testaments, made between 1277 and 1285. They were destroyed in the fire of 1823. His Last Judgment in the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, painted around 1293 and considered his masterwork, displays this Roman naturalism clearly. He is also attributed the apse paintings at San Giorgio al Velabro, on the basis of their stylistic similarity to the Trastevere work, and the apse mosaic of San Crisogono in the same district.

From 1308 he worked in Naples at the court of King Charles II of Anjou, in the churches of San Domenico Maggiore and Santa Maria Donnaregina, alongside his fellow Roman Filippo Rusuti. He returned to Rome before 1325, having begun the exterior decoration of San Paolo fuori le Mura in 1321 with a series of mosaics in the Byzantine style. Giovanni di Bartolommeo is listed among his pupils.

His legacy is difficult to reconstruct, since much of his output has been lost and is known mainly through fragments, written descriptions and attributions. Lorenzo Ghiberti, writing nearly a century after Cavallini's death, praised him as a highly regarded artist in his own time. His work forms an important link between Roman painting and later Florentine art.